Music to Celebrate Life

There are so many love songs out there in the cosmos – perhaps a zillion. And the older you get, the less they resonate with you because you know that while falling in love might be fun and easy, staying in love is all about hard work and determination. So as you age, listening to love songs with a straight face becomes a tad difficult, an experience that can be compared to watching movies you adored when you were a teenager – they just don’t seem to work anymore…

Sometimes when you are busy living your life a special moment arrives or rather you find yourself in one. It’s there without a warning and as you live through it, you realize that you’ll remember it for the rest of your life. These moments are hard to describe…

Ever had one of those mornings when you are on your way to work and you are tense and stressed? You have so many projects waiting for you that it’s hard to fathom how to get it all done in a timely manner and to top it off, you have one or two people in your life, like most of us, who are being insanely difficult. Sounds familiar?…

I remember watching a Canadian TV series called Black Harbor about twenty years ago. It's a show about a couple moving to Nova Scotia from LA with their two children and ultimately getting divorced. In one of the episodes, Nick, the father of the family, says to his kids, upon reminiscing on how he met their mother, that he doesn't know which hurts more falling in love or falling out of love…

Muhammed Ali once stressed the importance of positivity in achieving your goals in life by stating: “I am the greatest; I said that even before I knew I was.”

I admit the ability to stay positive is perhaps one of the most important skills a person can have. However, being continuously happy and satisfied is very difficult, if not impossible. In fact even staying content requires conscious effort, doesn’t it?..

Good night Seattle. This is Dr. Fraser Crane wishing you all good mental health.

I wonder how many fans of Fraser have truly ever pondered on the significance of that line – after all, we’re talking about a sitcom here and not a documentary on mental illnesses. However, anybody who’s ever been depressed, even for a little while, knows the importance of good mental health. In fact, good mental health is one of the most important things in life and as with health, we should always prioritize it.

One of the most famous pictures from the American West portrays the Apache warrior Geronimo behind the wheel of an early Cadillac. Most of us have seen this picture countless times in magazine articles, schoolbooks, newspapers and documentaries. There’s something about this image that both shakes you up and moves you at the same time…

Indeed it is. And we will get to the importance of time in a little bit, while discussing The People The Poet’s excellent new album A Short Obsession With Time, but let’s first take a look at what I’ve written about the two singles preceding the new record:

Long, long time ago in Mexico, I woke up on a beach in Puerto Vallarta. My head was hurting and I was nauseous. I had gone south of the border to have some fun, to take a break from my complex, draining life but instead, I had taken it upon myself to attempt to drown my sorrows in drink. And just like the old joke goes, the bastards had learned to swim…

A long time ago in London, as I was walking down King’s Road, I was approached by this lady who said that if I gave her a few minutes of my time, she could open my eyes in the matters of love. She was gorgeous. And no, she was not a streetwalker. Rather, she claimed to be part of a research group and asked me to follow her to this courtyard to fill out a questionnaire. The idea was that she would then create a love profile for me…

Growing up, relationships in general made very little sense to me. They were something that adults engaged themselves in, while I was busy getting in trouble at school or teasing my little brother. In my early adulthood, when I knew slightly more about the art of coexisting in close quarters with another person, I looked at relationships from a different point of view. I felt they were very complex and I had a hard time understanding the logic behind most of them…

Do you remember a time when music was interesting, psychedelic and yet, at the same time fun? It’s hard, isn’t it? Perhaps because this marriage of psychedelia and fun is not that common – at least not anymore. You’d have to go back to the music made in the late sixties or early seventies to find a larger pool of it relatively easily. By the way, if you do, check out tracks such as Procol Harum’s “Good Captain Clack” or “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” by the Beatles, as they are fantastic songs and productions. And if you don’t much like the music made in the sixties, don’t worry, there is another way to find out what I am talking about. Just google the Spanish Elastic Band’s fantastic single “All It’s Done” and give it a spin.

Elastic Band’s press release characterizes the group like this:

Their songs are sonic collages that use daring tricks as a means to intertwine decades, genres, trends and frequencies. This is done to reach unexpected musical destinations. With songs that could style-wise be described as leftovers from the 20th century, this duo is attempting to create 21st century pop. Their new album celebrates love, friendship and positive attitude, as reflected by the cover by Camille Perkins.

The following is a statement issued by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones on December 4, 1980 – two months after drummer John Bonham’s death.

We wish it to be known, that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were...

Truth is…indie bands like us aren’t in it for the money, we just want to know there’s a few people out there nodding their head to our stuff.

The above is a direct quote from the web pages of Observer Effect, a folk-rock group from Brisbane, Australia, who sent me a link to their new single “Philosopher” through Twitter. I clicked on it, had a listen and loved what I was hearing:...

A little more than a decade ago, a self-proclaimed Japanese scientist called Masaru Emoto conducted a series of tests on water. One part of his experiment consisted of placing tap water in a glass and exposing it to different words. To put this in a more simple way: He spoke to a glass of water. After this, Emoto froze the water he’d been conversing with and studied how the water crystals looked...

Since Frank Sinatra is well-known for mistakenly introducing ”Something” as his favorite Lennon–McCartney composition during his live shows (it’s written by another Beatle, George Harrison), it is therefore only fair that I introduce ”Coles Corner” as my favorite Frank Sinatra tune...

When I was about ten or eleven, our family was between houses for a few months. During this time, we lived in an apartment building close to the new neighborhood. I remember that time rather well due to the couple living next door to us. The reason for my vivid recollection of them is that they fought all the time – day in, day out. However, it wasn’t just the screaming and fighting that made them so memorable. It was that they both threw things out the window in the heat of the fight. As a matter of fact, my friends and I used to joke about them. We called the guy “Terminator” and the woman Sarah (as in the movie Terminator)...

New Year’s Eve 2000 is burned on my mind for two reasons. Firstly, my brother came to Chicago to celebrate it with me. This resulted in a New Year’s party that neither one of us has any recollection of. It wasn’t exactly like the movie “Hangover” but close enough. Secondly, and more importantly, New Year’s Day 2001 was the first time ever I heard Robbie Williams’ ”Better Man.”